JUST over a week until the Twelfth and the incitement is building. Sorry, the excitement. The excitement is building.
In the same way that the BBC doesn’t broadcast Kneecap live, the Twelfth isn’t broadcast live any more. But unlike its Glastonbury output, the acts the BBC will put on show in the parades on Saturday week are not subject to intense scrutiny. The BBC attends its chosen parades and does happy-clappy features on them featuring old-timers eating ice-cream, toddlers with little tin drums and laughing Orange Lils in union jack cowboy hats without giving us an overview including the more, ah, outré aspects of the big day: the Homeric drinking; the garden-pissing; the Fenian-baiting; the paramilitary worshipping.
The musical participants in the parades are available to the BBC in the Parades Commission filings, just as they are to the rest of us. But BBC Ulster just goes ahead and covers the parades anyway, even though said parades contain loyalist bands that have more scrotes than notes; more bums than drums; more... (that’s enough juvenile abuse – Ed).
Should BBC Our Wee Country be covering these parades even though they know they feature bands involved in a litany of sectarian behaviour over the years? Does a parade containing a band named after a UVF or UDA man become acceptable as long as the BBC doesn’t interview its brigadier? Sorry, its bandmaster?
It’s a moot point this year because the BBC is going to go ahead and pretend again that the Twelfth is a family fun event when half the city’s fled to Buncrana or Benidorm to get away from it. But just so you know what you’re really getting when the BBC does its holiday special round-up on Saturday evening, here are ten of the bands that the BBC will do their best to hide from our gaze.
FINAGHY TRUE BLUES
Stopped outside St Patrick’s in Donegall Street to march on the spot and play in breach of a ban on music outside the church.
Analysis: Played a hymn and not the Famine Song, so a valuable opportunity lost.
Loyal rating: 4/10.
CLASSY: A loyalist band played No Pope of Rome on the day Pope Francis died
PRIDE OF KNOCKMORE
Hours after Pope Francis died, the Lisburn band played ‘No Pope of Rome’ at an Apprentice Boys’ parade in the town. The event was attended by a number of prominent DUP figures who took to social media after the parade to condemn the band. Sorry, (checks notes) to say what a fantastic, fun-filled day it had been.
Analysis: A scintillating performance seamlessly blending sectarianism, bigotry and hatred – and doing it on a day guaranteed to magnify the effect.
Loyal rating: 9/10.
YOUNG CONWAY VOLUNTEERS
Showed Finaghy True Blues how do to do it when they played the Famine Song outside that Mecca of Ulster loyalism, St Patrick’s church. 13 members of the band later arrested and found guilty of playing the racist song claimed they were, in fact, playing the Sloop John B. The band wrote an open letter to North Belfast Catholics assuring them that no offence was meant.
Analysis: An incident that would have claimed its own chapter in the Annals of Ulster Staunch if the band hadn’t broke like plates at the first rattle of a handcuff.
Loyal rating: 1/10.
HILLHAVEN FLUTE BAND
Played ‘The Billy Boys’ and ‘No Pope of Rome’ at a band competition in Banbridge. So far, so what?, I hear you say. Well, when contacted the PSNI refused to say whether it was a hate crime or not, which raised the possibility that the words ‘We’re up to our knees in Fenian blood’ might be redesignated a Work of Outstanding Cultural Merit.
Analysis: The Irish News reported that ahead of the event local DUP MP Carla Lockhart had promoted the band competition on her Facebook page.
Loyal rating: 7/10
CONSTABLE ANDERSON MEMORIAL FLUTE BAND
What better way to show your respect and admiration for the RUC than by playing loyalist tunes outside a Catholic church when you’re not allowed to? The band travelled from Larne to give it the guttie outside that centrepiece of loyalist culture, St Patrick’s church in Donegall Street.
Analysis: Again, an outstanding performance destroyed by rank cowardice. Three of six men charged and found guilty over the incident told the court they hadn’t been playing instruments. The ‘I nivver done it so I nivver’ gambit is the curse of the band scene.
Loyal rating: 0/10.
TOYE FLUTE BAND
A parade turned “ugly and aggressive” after a priest remonstrated with loyalist bandsmen urinating against Killyleagh’s Catholic church. A spokesman for Toye Flute Band hit out angrily after the incident – at the local parish priest. He said the incident “could have ended up much worse but police told the priest to go into his house because he was risking getting into bigger bother.”
Analysis: Top loyalism on show here, but blaming the Catholic priest and not the Protestant Pissers takes this to another level.
Loyal rating: 9/10.
LANARKSHIRE LOYALIST FLUTE BAND
The Saturday evening climax to the Scottish band’s ‘Culture Day’ in a Glasgow council hall took a Deep South turn when the prizes were handed out by a bloke in full Ku Klux Klan regalia.
ANALYSIS: No bedsheets with holes cut out for eyes here – only total commitment from the Grand Wizard of Wishaw with a real Ku Klux Kan outfit with a real Ku Klu Klan badge. Extra kudos for the string of poppies behind KKK guy.
Loyal rating: 8/10.
CLYDE VALLEY FLUTE BAND
As if being named after a treasonous, illegal gun-running venture wasn’t thrilling enough, the Larne band travelled 75 miles to Derry in order to show off their purple shirts with the Parachute badge and the letter ‘F’ in the city where the Parachute Regiment murdered 14 people.
Analysis: When they were stopped on the motorway on the home by the police, they acted like it was a bigger injustice than Bloody Sunday, which was a bit whiney and un-Ulstery. Another outstanding performance ruined by lack of bottle.
Loyal rating: 4/10.
GOVAN PROTESTANT BOYS
Alongside the Siege of Derry and the Battle of the Boyne, a Glasgow band occupying Belfast City Hall goes down in history as one of the great military triumphs of loyal history. Not content with parading in mixed areas in Scotland, the band paraded through Belfast’s most famous public buildings, playing a loyal selection of loyal sectarian tunes.
Analysis: Loyal Ulster again snatched defeat from the jaws of victory when the lodge which booked the hall issued a grovelling apology, saying it had no idea the feral Scotchies would get out of their cage. Sorry, leave the function room.
Loyal rating: 2/10.
SHANKILL STAR FLUTE BAND
Picture the scene: A cross-community event featuring happy children from all over the city. Groups and individuals that are normally on opposite sides of a wall are in a room together chatting happily and getting to know each other over tea and buns. In walks the representative of the band scene in his milkman’s uniform and a cap with a badge bearing the name of notorious UVF killer Brian Robinson.
Analysis: It’s all about getting the message out wherever you can and extra kudos come because the message is being spread to the community which the aforementioned Mr Robinson spent so much time trying to kill.
Loyal rating: 10/10.
